A Day in the Life of an Arizona Rancher: Border Fences, Illegal Aliens, and One Man’s Watchtower

WASHINGTON (March 2011) - The Center for Immigration Studies has produced its first web-based film that looks in depth at what it is like to live as an Arizona rancher amongst the isolation and dangers posed by illegal immigration. “A Day in the Life of an Arizona Rancher: Border Fences, Illegal Aliens, and One Man’s Watchtower,” released one year after the March 2010 tragic murder of rancher Robert Krentz, unravels the mindset of a rancher trying to balance the complexities of illegal immigration when dealing with protecting himself, his family and his property from unknown, constant and potentially dangerous trespassers who in Arizona are nearly always illegal aliens.

Richard Humphries, a lifelong Arizona resident and former narcotics cop living thirty miles north of the southeast Arizona border in Cochise County, became concerned enough with illegal activity on his land to build a watchtower to help himself and federal law enforcement track illegal aliens on his 75 acre ranch. This film relates Mr. Humphries’ humane approach to curbing illegal immigration in his own words, chronicling stories about a 150 mile car chase of an illegal alien load; a close call at his front gate; a thirsty and scared woman who had lost her coyote; and a rancher’s view of the Border Patrol tasked with interdicting illegal aliens across a still-porous border. The film’s introduction provides a reality check on the extent that border fencing does and does not exist from Douglas to Nogales, and a view of ‘Los Corrales’ from the U.S. side of the border, a holding refuge for the smuggled.

This is the fourth mini-documentary by Janice Kephart, the Center's National Security Policy Director. It is a two part film, running less than 20 minutes in total. In aggregate, Ms. Kephart’s films have nearly 700,000 views. Her prior three mini-documentaries are as follows:

The Center for Immigration Studies is an independent, non-partisan, non-profit research organization founded in 1985.
It is the nation's only think tank devoted exclusively to research and policy analysis of the economic, social, demographic,
fiscal, and other impacts of immigration on the United States.